Twickenham dropped to eighth place in the London 2 South West league with an away defeat to local rivals Weybridge Vandals.

Ts opened the scoring with a Luke Scarborough penalty five minutes in after Vandals dangerously pulled down the line-out jumper.

Ts were dominating the line-outs winning much of their opposition’s ball but with the lighter pack struggled to win set piece ball in the scrums which starved the backs of the possession they needed to mount an attack.

At the end of the first quarter, Vandals used their weight advantage to go for a push over try. They were awarded a penalty try as a result of Ts collapse and slotted their conversion from under the posts. The game remained deadlocked for the remainder of the half taking the score to 7 – 3 at the interval.

It was a good fifteen minutes into the second half before Vandals ran a good backs’ move scoring out on the right wing to extend their lead to 14 – 3. T’s attempts to kick long for territory were thwarted by the Vandal’s full-back who was able to get under the high balls and launch an effective counter-attack - despite the outstanding kick-chases and aggressive tackling from T’s wing and full-back combination of Rupert Freeman and Matt Wadden. Towards the end of the second half, Ts began to up the tempo and when they kept the ball in hand were able to push forward into Vandal’s territory with some great line breaks from centres Joe Ash and Hywel Gammage. This late dominance saw Vandals concede a penalty which was taken quickly by scrum-half Tom Eastham who went over to score from close range in the dying minutes of the game. Once again this was too little, too late for Twickenham who finished strongly but with a tantalising four point deficit.